Jet Airways launches flight to US

Jet Airways on Sunday flagged off its maiden flight to the US, becoming the second Indian carrier after Air India to fly to America.

Air India started non-stop services to the US earlier this week. However, unlike Air India, Jet would have a two-hour stop at Brussels, which would be brought down to 90 minutes in the future, a company official said.

Giving reason for the stop at Brussels, the official said customer feedback suggests that they are comfortable flying transatlantic with a break in-between.

Jet, with the US in its map, plans to add services to Toronto from September 5 and Johannesburg from October or November as soon as its new fleet arrives.

Earlier, Jet Chairman Naresh Goyal said, the company would look at collaboration with its competitor Air India in the transatlantic route.

Explaining the collaboration, the Jet Airways Executive Vice President and wife of Naresh Goyal, Anita N Goyal, said Jet may look at maintenance and engineering services as both the airlines fly the same type of aircraft manufactured by Boeing.

Two-year-old Kingfisher is keen to fly to the US. But before flying to any foreign destination, norms say that domestic operators need at least five years of operations.

Kingfisher is lobbying the government to bring down the five year stipulation to three so that it can start flying from next year.